


Neutral Ground

by ruthenia



Series: since the heart beat is slow [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Inferiority Complex, Suicidal Thoughts, Tsunderes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 14:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3450173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruthenia/pseuds/ruthenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Preventing Severa from throwing herself recklessly into mortal danger wasn’t really how Kjelle had pictured their reunion going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neutral Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place pre-I Will Cover You but can stand alone. Contains mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts and actions.

The first time Kjelle stopped her, she got an annoyed glance. The second time, she got a furious shout.

The third time Kjelle dragged Severa back by one of her ponytails, Severa snapped, “What is _wrong_ with you? Are you _trying_ to rip out all my hair? You know it catches in your gauntlets! You could make a wig by now!”

“I’m _trying_ to stop you from killing yourself,” Kjelle said evenly, moving back into her stance:  spear forward, feet spaced apart, eyes forward. Nobody was getting past her. “There are long-distance fighters on the other side of the wall. If I hadn’t brought you back, your hair would be the least of your worries.” As it should be, Kjelle thought, but Severa took a great deal of pride in her impractical hairstyle. “We’ve been instructed to hold our position here.”

No sooner had she spoken than did a bandit careen into view, grinning stupidly at his targets. Kjelle stood stock-still, waiting for him to come to her. Severa made a frustrated sound and leapt at him. His grin hadn’t fallen from his face before he was dead.

“You mean _you’ve_ been instructed to hold position,” Severa said. “I haven’t been given any orders.” She wiped her blade off on the bandit’s clothes. “Yuck. Grimy. Did this guy ever wash his clothes?”

“You weren’t _given_ any orders because you ran off before Nereis could speak two words to you.” Kjelle had only met Severa because Owain’s mother had teleported her behind the frontlines—apparently she’d been just as much of a liability to them. Severa had been outraged. “What is this about, Severa?”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re implying.”

Spoken like she hadn’t always complained about Kjelle’s unladylike bluntness. “In the future, you might have taken a few risks, but you were never this stupid.”

“ _Stupid_? This isn’t the future, Kjelle!” Severa’s sword clattered to the ground and she clenched her fists. “It’s the past and nothing is right and nothing has _gone right_ and why the hell were we sent back when we haven’t been able to change _anything_?”

Kjelle frowned. Despite herself, she eased out of her stance, lowering her spear. “Severa… how long have you been here?”

“A year. A whole year trying to find the rest of the idiots who went back with me but only getting caught up in mess after mess. This extortionist trying to make me fight for him—well, why wouldn’t he, look at these half-trained nitwits—is just the latest in my long string of bad luck.” She kicked the corpse at her feet. Kjelle pursed her lips but let it slide.

That was a long time to be on her own—hiding her identity, bereft of the support system they’d all taken for granted in the future-past. Gerome was a broody mumbler, but Kjelle had only realized once they were parted that he had always mended her shirts. Sh couldn't sew a stitch. Most of them had been able to cook half-way decent meals, but Severa had made _good_ food. Kjelle’s teacher’s wife, on the other hand, had sent several prayers to the gods that Kjelle had found them so quickly because she would have poisoned herself trying to boil water.

In the six months Kjelle had passed here before Chrom’s company found her, even _she_ had been… well…

Lonely. And Severa was extremely sensitive to her own feelings, which was both a blessing and a curse.

“Lucina has changed things,” Kjelle said. “She stopped Emmeryn’s assassination and prevented Chrom from suffering the injury that always bothered him.”

“Oh, I saw Princess Goody-Good. In the thick of the fighting, of course, and never taking a hit. Never straying from Tiki’s back, either. That’s a new one.”

“What do you mean?”

Severa rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.” She crossed her arms. “So Lucina mixed a few things up. Emmeryn still died and Grima is still out there. The Risen are still terrorizing the world.”

“Did you think we’d get here, go after Grima without delay, and kill him in a resounding victory? If it were that easy, the Shepherds in our time would have already done it.”

“That’s right,” Severa said, surprising Kjelle. “So what do we add here, Kjelle? It’s just as hopeless a fight as it ever was.”

“I don’t believe that and I can’t believe you do either. Naga wouldn’t have sent us back if she didn’t think we could help.” Kjelle, with a moment’s hesitation, laid down her spear and strode forward to lightly rest her gauntleted hands on Severa’s arms. The other woman allowed it with troubling silence, staring at the ground. “I didn’t think this was how our reunion would go,” Kjelle said quietly.

“Disappointed?” Severa whispered.

That was Severa’s greatest fear:  disappointing people. Her mother, her friends. Complete strangers. She had to be above reproach, and when she inevitably failed, she crashed down like this. But it had never been this bad.  “Is that what you think you’ve done? Let everyone down?”

Severa’s hands came up to grasp Kjelle’s wrists. “Do you remember...back then? Naga’s ritual? The people who saw us off?”

Kjelle remembered. Frederick, who was a shell of a man after Chrom’s death and had held on only to protect his lord’s daughter. Panne, fur bloody and matted, spinning a circle of death. They were the sole surviving Shepherds. There were the nearby villagers, most of whom had never before picked up a sword, holding the line just long enough and not knowing the real reason for their fight but knowing it was important. There was what remained of the castle guard, who had ignored Lucina’s screams for them to run.

Kjelle had turned away after that, unable to bear it, and angled Severa’s face into her shoulder, burying her own face into Severa’s stupid, impractical, silky hair.

“They died so Naga could send us back,” Severa said. “We have to make it worth it. We have to—”  
  
“You think I disagree?” Kjelle shook her. “How is trying to kill yourself going to accomplish that?”

Severa was trembling now. Kjelle wished they were in a place where she could pull off her armor and hold her like she had in the future past, but they were risking enough danger with their weapons at their feet. “I’ve just wanted it to be over,” Severa whispered. “So many times. I’m so tired. Then I saw you here and, and look at you! Robust as ever, facing the end of the world with that same unimpressed look on your face. What good was I ever?” Her cold fingers ghosted across Kjelle’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Kjelle. I’m not strong like you.”

Normally her last sentence would be a sarcastic sneer, but this time Severa had an expression that made a sick pit of fear roil in Kjelle’s stomach. “We’re none of us strong all the time, Severa. We—”

“Don’t try to placate me. Did _you_ ever give up?”

Kjelle was silent. Severa’s face twisted; she moved to pull away. Kjelle, fear flitting wildly in her stomach, held her fast and blurted, “I gave up on ever finding you again.”

“...What?”

Kjelle fought the light blush on her cheeks and her reticence with talking about _feelings_. Severa had to hear this. “We haven’t even found half of our original group, and there’s not much time left before the end. I can feel it.”  
  
“Relying on your emotions?” Severa’s grip on Kjelle tightened. “What’s next? A declaration of love?” Her stare was boring into Kjelle.

_You know we never needed that,_ Kjelle thought, then:   _maybe we did._ “I thought you could have been dead already. Naga never guaranteed our safety here, just gave us the chance. I thought I was going to die in dragon fire just like our parents and never get to see you again. I thought that _un_ like them, we wouldn’t get to see each other one last time. Take our last breaths together.”

“This is getting morbid,” Severa said. Her fingers were doing their level best to make dents in Kjelle’s armor.

“Then here you were,” Kjelle continued, “alive, in one piece, and you glared at me, took off running, and were nearly skewered by a half-dozen arrows and mage-fire before I could get to you.” That first grasp of Severa’s ponytail and she’d almost not let go. “You don’t have to be a prodigy like your mother—”

“Or a stone-headed woman in a metal box?”

“—or _like me_ to _matter_ , Severa. You haven't let anyone down. You’ll never change things at all if you’re dead. And—” Kjelle swallowed. Was this too selfish? Was this the right moment? Would they ever have a right moment? “And I love you, so please for my sake _don’t ever do that again_.”

Severa’s mouth dropped open—how did she keep her lips pink and supple in a warzone when Kjelle’s were always chapped and bleeding? Her hand curled in the hesitant gesture that meant she was about to be sincere against her better judgment.

“Isn’t this _touching_.”

The man who’d found them wore robes and clutched a staff. A mage, Kjelle noted, tensing. He could burn them alive before she could reach her weapon. How had he gotten past the main force? Her fighting style included a natural weakness to magic—Severa was faster, but could she—

“Nelson!” Severa shrilled, breaking apart from Kjelle. “You pasty-faced beanpole with your disgusting stringy hair! My ring is probably covered in grease now, isn’t it!”

“Your precious ring is—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Severa screamed. “My girlfriend and I were having a _moment_ and you _ruined_ it. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen her?”

“I—”

“A whole _year_! And you step in and think you can _interrupt_ us and give me some trite villainous speech? I’ve fought drooling monsters tougher than you! Gods, what was I thinking? I should have killed you and dragged Holland out by his ear!”

Severa was fast, but her speed as she retrieved her sword and flashed toward Nelson was nearly superhuman. He sputtered out a weak bolt of lightning—she dodged—and ran him through before he could begin a new incantation.

“Why does it feel like I’ve barely done anything since we got here?” Kjelle wondered aloud.

“You were too busy beating sense into my head,” Severa said, rummaging through Nelson’s belongings and plucking out her ring, which she dropped in a pocket. She sidled back over with a swing to her hips. Showing fools their place got her blood up. “With your usual lack of subtlety and grace.” She wrapped her arms around Kjelle’s neck. “I can’t promise I won’t—go back there again,” she added, looking uncomfortable.

Taking “there” to mean her dispirited state of mind, Kjelle slowly nodded. Severa, pressed against the front of her body, was a light pressure through her armor. The faintest whiff of a floral perfume trailed from her skin. There was that singular freckle near her nose that she would cover with foundation every morning and that Kjelle would kiss every evening.

Kjelle wasn't the type to collapse from relief, but she was nonetheless glad that heavy armor did an excellent job of keeping a woman on her feet. 

“But I—I’m not dead yet, right?" Severa said. "And according to you that means I've got to keep trying.” That hadn't precisely been what she’d said, but Severa seemed to be in a better place; Kjelle let it go.

“So here I am. Trying. With you. And you make it all a little—easier.” Severa was beet-red. “Say something.”

“I love you,” Kjelle said.

“Augh!” With a thunk, Severa’s forehead hit the centerpiece of Kjelle’s armor. “What is this, you’ve said it once and now you can’t stop?”

“I want to make sure you don’t forget.”

“I hope you know,” Severa said, “that after I get Holland out of here, and after my mother tracks me down—”

“And after you apologize to Nereis for blowing her off,” Kjelle said.

“—and after I apologize to Lucina’s _saintly_ mother,” Severa agreed, with barely a grimace. Astounding.

“After all of that—” She stood on her tiptoes and nuzzled Kjelle’s ear, blowing out hot breath. Kjelle shivered. “We’re marching straight to your tent and doing it until our legs can’t hold us up.”

“That’s... a good plan,” Kjelle said, guiding Severa’s face to hers. “My girlfriend,” she murmured as she brushed Severa’s lips—which were as soft as they’d looked, “is brilliant.”

“Don’t you forget _that_ ,” Severa said, and licked the seam of Kjelle’s lips before shoving her roughly away. “We’ve got stragglers to clean up and a scared idiot to find.” She turned and brandished her sword, walking down the corridor. She glanced back, then quickly looked away. “There’s this big oaf I love that could maybe kick his ass into gear.”

After a speechless moment, Kjelle said, “I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”

“He’s probably huddled in a corner somewhere with a weapon he doesn’t know how to use. Let’s get going.” With a flounce, Severa disappeared down the corridor, likely so Kjelle wouldn’t see the relief on her face. For all her bluster, Kjelle thought, Severa was horribly insecure. She’d told Severa flat-out what the other woman meant to her, but until just now, she hadn’t really believed in Kjelle’s feelings. Could be she still didn’t.

They’d have a long time to work on that, of course, Kjelle considered, picking up her spear and moving to catch up with Severa.

It wouldn’t do to have her take an arrow and die before Kjelle could ask to marry her.

 


End file.
